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Held down and breathless: When police restraint turns fatal

Held down and breathless: When police restraint turns fatal

More than 50 people over the past decade have died at least in part due to the way police forcibly restrained them or the physical stress associated with being taken into custody, according to an American-Statesman investigation of nearly 300 Texas fatalities from 2005 to 2016. Medical examiners determined four-fifths of the cases were homicides.

Law enforcement officers place citizens under restraint tens of thousands of times every day. The overwhelming majority of such incidents occur without a hitch. Police say confrontational or violent interactions, however, present them with some of their job’s most formidable challenges.

Departments train on restraint techniques and proper use of tools such as their weapons, handcuffs and leg shackles. Yet officers in some cases failed to follow policies designed to minimize harm, the newspaper’s review found.

In 9 of the cases, documents indicate the person died in police custody after being “hogtied” — a tactic banned by many law enforcement agencies over concerns of asphyxia.